If you caught our most recent post – the importance of proper keyword research was stressed.
Your keywords can be used for ranking videos on Youtube as well as pages on Google.
Many entrepreneurs that are inexperienced in internet marketing will make assumptions on the keywords they need to target.
With an enthusiasm to get the ball rolling, combined with the desire to get through a tall order of online tasks, someone can be forgiven for speeding through the keyword research phase.
But keywords are worth money. And letting certain phrases slip through your fingers can cost your business tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
A common mistake is chasing keywords with a high search volume, but not taking into account the intent of the searcher.
Does the search phrase you want to target have ‘buyer intent’?
A perfect example of this would be an entrepreneur who sells an online course on ‘how to play the guitar’.
The marketer looks at the search volumes around the variations of the phrase ‘guitar tips’ and decides he wants to target that phrase. Although the monthly searches are high, he has failed to consider that people typing in that phrase are mainly looking for free advice.
On the other hand, the search term ‘best guitar courses’ or ‘online guitar courses’ carry an intent to buy. Although the monthly search volume is much lower, the quality of your traffic is much more valuable.
This leads to the next question…
Have you chosen keywords that are too broad?
Someone who sells something specific need to focus on specific keywords.
If you sell designer glass coffee tables; trying to target ‘tables’ or simply ‘coffee tables’ will yield poor results in sales.
You first need to ask yourself – what percentage of people who are searching for this phrase ‘coffee tables’ is looking for expensive glass designer coffee tables? Probably not many. Which means the effort in trying to rank for this broad term is a waste of resources.
Rather, it would be more beneficial to concentrate on more specific search terms. Even though the search volume may be much lower.
The beauty of targeting more specific keywords is they are often less competitive to rank for.
Are you using your keywords within your metadata?
What is metadata?
Your metadata is the information the search engines need to find and index your web pages.
When you search for something and Google delivers a page of options with different titles and descriptions to click-on…. these are meta titles and descriptions.
If your website is built with wordpress, you can easily install a plugin that helps you take care of this. Popular versions are ‘SEO by Yoast’ or ‘All-In-One SEO’. The fields to fill out are at the bottom of your page or posts.
The previous post mentioned using your best keyword for your meta title. Now sprinkle your supporting keywords through your description.
Finally, A very important rule to remember is to make sure the content of your page properly fits the meta title and description. Many inexperienced marketers will implement a keyword rich title and description, but when a visitor clicks on to the page, the visitor doesn’t find what they are looking for. Example: If your title and description targets ‘guitar playing tips’ then make sure your page has plenty of guitar tips.
If you fail to recognise this, you will develop a high bounce rate. Which is frowned upon by Google.
The third and final instalment of this series will be about the different ways to do your keyword research and how to do competition analysis.